1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to electrophoretic displays, and particularly to an electrophoretic display that only refreshes image data in a refresh area of an image to reduce image fading and conserve power.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Because electrophoretic panels are bistable, electrophoretic panels only require electricity when refreshing image data. If an electrophoretic panel is not required to refresh image data, power can be turned off, and the electrophoretic panel will continue to display the image data. Please refer to FIG. 1A, FIG. 1B, and FIG. 2. FIG. 1A and FIG. 1B are diagrams of images displayed by electrophoretic panel 100 according to the prior art. FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a plurality of gate lines being sequentially enabled and a plurality of data lines all being enabled when electrophoretic panel 100 refreshes from the image of FIG. 1A to the image of FIG. 1B. As shown in FIG. 1A and FIG. 1B, when electrophoretic panel 100 is refreshed from displaying the image of FIG. 1A to the image of FIG. 1B, the entire display of electrophoretic panel 100, including refresh area B and non-refresh area A, is refreshed, i.e. the plurality of gate lines and the plurality of data lines of electrophoretic panel 100 are all enabled sequentially. Thus, electrophoretic panel 100 does not take advantage of its bistable property to save power. Further, as shown in FIG. 2, image data of an image displayed by non-refresh area A of electrophoretic panel 100 all exhibits fading due to common voltage of electrophoretic panel 100 corresponding to non-refresh area A being refreshed.
Thus, in the prior art, electrophoretic display driving methods not only do not take advantage of the bistable property of electrophoretic panels to save power, but images displayed by the electrophoretic panel also exhibit fading.